That’s extremely kind of you, Aphra. For us, it will be the end of a 47-year partnership. Not easy in any circumstances, but with both in poor health and under stress, painful to contemplate without deep dismay.

I’ve been fairly OK so far this year, and have first-rate consultants, but with no clear picture beyond the next outpatients’ appointment, everything is short-term these days. I can’t go out much, and blog for therapy.

There’s the missing the person, and there’s unfinished business. I am sure that you and your parner will have said everything that should be said, and asked and answered everything that should be asked and answered when the time comes.

One thing that made my father’s passing easier for us all was that we had spent two weeks or so going through my parents things when they moved out of their home which was a couple of months before he died. We could ask him who the pretty girl in the photo was, what the impressive building had been, why he’d bought that particular postcard, and it was intense but ultimately much easier.

I cannot imagine the complexities of starting that process of gentle disentangling and closure in a partnership of 47 years though.